Puppy therapy - just in time for finals week.

Puppy therapy - just in time for finals week.

Just down the hall from the reference desk at Emory University's law library in a room housing antique legal texts is Stanley the golden retriever puppy, barking his head off. From Kent State University in Ohio to Macalester College in Minnesota, more and more pooches are around campus during exams to help students relax and maybe even crack a joke or two.

"We had a student who came in and a staff person commented they had never seen that student smile," said Michelle Reid, a law librarian who started Emory's pet therapy program this year after hearing about one at the University of California, San Francisco. Pups are in counselling centres for students to visit regularly or faculty and staff bring their pets to lift spirits. Pet-friendly dorms also are popping up where students can bring their dogs or cats from home.

It's possible at Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, which both have resident therapy dogs in their libraries that can be borrowed through the card catalogue just like a book. Some dogs, like Harvard Medical School's resident Lassa Cooper, hold regular office hours. Researcher Louise Francisco-Anderson owns Cooper and said she got permission to bring him to campus after her husband read that Yale Law School had a therapy dog on campus named Monty.

A pet keeps it confidential. Most schools, like Emory, partner with organizations that train companion dogs so that the canines get their social training while students get stress relief. The service is almost always free for students. Research shows that interaction with pets decreases the level of cortisol - a stress hormone - in people and increases endorphins, known as the happiness hormone. Scant research exists on the how pet programs on college campuses help students cope with stress.

That's why Kathleen Adele, a nursing professor at Kent State, hopes to garner a grant so she can conduct research as part of her "Dogs on Campus" program. The dogs belong to Adele or other community members and are certified therapy dogs. As soon as there's a tragedy on campus - a student dies in a car wreck, for example - dorms scramble to book the dog team to help comfort upset students, she says. 

Since 2006, Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., has asked faculty and alumni to bring their dogs to campus during finals as part of the "Dog Day Afternoon" program. At Kenyon College in Ohio, the counselling centre and dorms offer puppy play dates with Sunny the yellow lab and Sam the poodle-Chihuahua mix.

Last month, Indiana University students romped around with dogs in the first ever "Rent-a-Puppy" day. First-year Emory law student Anna Idelevich took a break from studying for exams at the library on a recent afternoon to visit Stanley and Hooch, two golden retrievers training to be companion dogs for disabled owners. The private university brought in the dogs as part of a new program to help students cope with the stress of exams.